Chapter 48

After the excitement died down, Annie ruefully confessed that she didn't have enough room for all of them. Business had been good, she said, but not that good!

Marshall just laughed, got his crewmembers settled in the only inn on the island, then headed into the forest to bring back a tree to replace the bed he'd long since outgrown.

(His stomach growled on the way back and he decided to grab some food.

The local bobcat population was appropriately terrified.)

It took a week before Marshall was confident enough that his crew wasn't about to keel over from bloodloss that he was comfortable leaving their care to the island doctor.

There was someone he needed to see.

"You did good, Mettie,"

Placing his hand on the ship's main mast, he listened to Mettie's uncertain creaking. Smiling slightly, he rested his forehead against the polished wood. "I mean it, you did good. We were all scared, but you fought through the fear and got everyone to safety all on your own. That's something to be proud of."

Then, voice gentle, he said the words that Mettie needed to hear:

"And because of that, they'll all be okay."

....!

The creaking of the ship's hull sounded like sobbing.

Marshall stayed with her the entire time, his presence a silent comfort as Metanoia finally voiced the panic, anger, fear, worry and relief she'd been keeping inside.

Annie found him sitting in the kitchen in the middle of the night, nursing a bottle of the strongest liquor he could find and staring out the window into the night.

She got a glass, poured herself a shot, sat down and waited.

Maybe it was nostalgia or maybe the liquor, but Marshall told her about all the adventures he'd had since leaving Orango, even the ones he'd sworn never to speak of again, but when he got to Rouge's death...he had to stop and breathe. In and out, the burn of tears in his eyes from poking at a wound scabbed over but still far too fresh.

Then Annie was there, throwing her arms around his head and hugging him tightly. She didn't say anything, but he took the unspoken offer for what it was, burying his face in her shoulder and crying.

No loud, heaving sobs disturbed the silence, though his shoulders shook as a steady flow of tears rapidly darkened the fabric of Annie's shirt.

Just like Metanoia had, Marshall cried, and just like he had, Annie stayed with him the entire time.

Annie stumbled into the kitchen the next morning to see Marshall humming happily as he cooked breakfast.

"Morning, Annie," he greeted, teeth brushed and freshly shaved, looking like he'd gotten a full night's sleep.

Eye twitching, Annie croaked out, "are you even human?"

Marshall grinned.

(Their coat was stained.

The first tangible gift they'd gotten from their Captain, aside from the gift of a place on the ship and crew, and it was stained, ruined, by their failure.

The crew's first battle against a New World-level enemy and they had fallen laughably easily. Despite all the training, despite learning haki and working to master their Devil Fruit, they'd lost. The knowledge burned in their mind, but more than that, their dominant feeling was shame. They'd failed, the rest of the crew had been injured, and Captain had had to save them.

Formerly pristine white feathers were clumped and matted, dyed a ruddy brown by their blood, and the sight was more than they could bear.

Unable to stand the thought of their Captain's gift being ruined, they scrubbed and scrubbed until their wounds burned and threatened to reopen but it wasn't enough.

They couldn't stop, no, they wouldn't stop, not until the coat was clean again. The feathered piece of clothing wasn't the only thing that Captain had given them, but it was undeniably theirs. They couldn't bear the thought of it never being clean again.

The edges of the bottom feathers were still a dark, ruddy brown, and it was only when a small hand, callused and swathed in bandages like their own, laid itself on top of theirs that Ashley realized they were crying.

Atreya, purple eyes unusually serious but also understanding, silently wrapped her bandaged arms around them. The newfound height difference meant that the redheaded girl was practically hanging off their neck, but they didn't care, returning the embrace with equal fervor.

Eyes squeezed shut, they sat there shaking, fine tremors wracking their frame as Atreya gently rocked them back and forth.

A small, fuzzy body - Kyle - crawled beneath their mass of hair and draped itself over their neck, not saying anything but wordlessly offering comfort. A pair of arms wrapped around both them and Atreya, pulling them close to a curvaceous figure - Dina. A loud thump told them that Topaz had somehow made it into the room, the fish curling around them.

"It's okay," Dina whispered, the words echoed by everyone currently able, "we'll help you fix it,"

And, working through the night until the coat was as white as it had been when Captain had first given it to them, they did.)

"-so that's the situation."

Marshall finished, leaning back in his chair and, conveniently, away from the snail.

There was a stunned silence, then the gastropod erupted.

"Are you all okay?!"

Wincing for a moment because of the sheer volume, Marshall assured Vertara and the others, "they'll be fine, just gonna take a bit to heal up, so I wanted to let you all know we're gonna be a bit late to the reunion."

"Take as much time as you need, the reunion can wait until you're all healed," Olivia said firmly.

Noticeably, no one argued.

(His first crew all remembered that first encounter with Compote and keenly understood what his second was going through.)

"You said something about your chicken Zoan wanting to take over as the crew's doctor, right? We can use the extra time to put together a beginner's kit and some material to get them started." Rune suggested, Olivia quickly seconding the idea.

"And Dina sounds like she might be interested in a gunnery position! I could gather up some of my old pistols and ammo belts she can use," Cino chimed in.

"Sounds like this goldfish of yours can us some tips on underwater combat; might even be able to modify some Fishman Karate forms before you get here." Zarazan said cheerfully.

"I'll have everything ready to your gremlin get into shape when you arrive!" Vertara cackled.

"Leave the rabbit to us." Feral grunted, Trax growling in agreement.

"What? Hey! I wanted to give the fuzzball some pointers!" Wilde whined, sparking a heated debate.

Marshall laughed.

Really, nothing more needed to be said beyond:

"Thank you."

"So, how are you feeling?" Marshall crossed his arms, giving Topaz a look that warned the giant fish against lying.

The goldfish paused, looking shifty for a moment before confessing, "not too good; my fins are healing but they itch."

"If you do, they'll take longer to heal. I am not an aquatic veterinarian, the absolute last thing we need is for you to get an infection!"

Topaz squirmed, "but they itch, and it's so hard not to just brush against those rocks in the bottom of the bay..."

"No scratching!"

The fish frantically agreed.

(Marshall walked off, making a mental note to ask if the apothecary had any anti-itching medicine that would work on Topaz.

Answer: they did.)

He broke the news to his second crew that his first was planning to train them only after he was sure that they weren't at risk of reopening their wounds.

The mixture of surprise, panic, terror and absolute glee the announcement received proved that he was right to do so.

Marshall hadn't known the gremlin could jump that high without her Devil Fruit and was mildly impressed.

Listening to Annie's cackling, Marshall wasn't even surprised when he walked into Orango's one jail to see, in order:

A bright pink hybrid-form Kyle.

Dina dressed as a ringmaster with a tiger-striped cape.

A sparkly chicken.

Topaz wearing a tricorn hat and sweatervest.

The gremlin wobbling unsteadily in six inch golden heels, looking like she was about to fall over at any moment.

All of them looked embarrassed but said nothing, likely because of the peanut butter he'd heard about on his way to collect the idiots who thought the best way to celebrate getting their bandages off was to get completely hammered.

Honestly, Marshall wasn't even surprised - compared to the shit his first crew regularly pulled, this was tame.

Didn't mean he wasn't going to mess with them though.

"Right, everyone back to Mettie." He decided, "you'll learn your punishments-" and about the pictures he took, "-after you sober up."

("Why were you wearing heels?" He asked the gremlin later, pointing out, "you obviously can't walk in them."

"Ashley bet me I couldn't." The gremlin shrugged in response, reluctantly admitting, "they were right."

Kyle chose that moment to stroll by in eight inch heels sharp enough to stab someone, radiating smugness.

The gremlin made an inarticulate sound of fury, shifting partially into Zoan form and charging after the rabbit-woman.

Marshall sighed.)

They left Orango a week later, Annie, her sister and her brother-in-law seeing them off at the docks.

"You have my snail number now, so you have no excuse not to call," Annie sniffled, wrapping her arms around Marshall's neck as he lifted her off her feet in a tight hug.

"And you have mine, so don't be afraid to call if you need anything, or just want to listen to me rant about what my idiots did that day," Marshall replied, giving her one last squeeze before setting her back on her feet.

Off to the side the gremlin was trying to pretend she wasn't about to start crying as she hugged Mary, the older woman having no such notions and freely bawling as she made the gremlin promise to call or, failing that, to write.

With moderately more composure, Dina and Kyle both said goodbye to Mary's husband Richard, the older man promptly saying, "fuck that," and pulling the two into a hug.

The gremlin wasn't the only one who'd made friends, Marshall noted, chuckling as he saw Ashley attempting to look cool while inviting Evan, Mary and Richard's son (and hadn't that been a surprise), in for a hug. An invitation the teenager quickly accepted.

Finally, after more hugs and tears and promises extracted to fucking call, damn it, I don't care if you need to do it from the Locker, the Metanoia lifted her anchor, sailing from Orango several months after they arrived.

A leisurely departure as opposed to their frantic arrival, and he wasn't the only one to appreciate the difference.

("Well, there they go," Richard sighed.

The last few months had been interesting, if nothing else, and Richard was honestly a bit sad to see Marshall and his crew go.

"We'll see them again, won't we?" Evan asked, sniffling.

"Mark my words, we haven't seen the last of them," Mary snorted, blinking misty eyes. "We have their snail number, if nothing else, and they have ours which they had better use."

"Oh, they will," Annie sniffed, wiping away tears and smiling as she watched Marshall's ship vanish over the horizon. "Marshall's a man of his word, and if he says he'll call, he'll call."

A pause, and then she laughed, "the idiot doesn't think I noticed that he finished all the commissions I had for the next month yet."

Mary, Richard and Evan all blinked, then the four of them laughed.)

(The Coddiwomple was the first one to spot the other ship, little more than a dot on the horizon but swiftly approaching.

A dark vessel with trim painted a light purple - the inverse of her own colors - that matched her for size if not slightly different in shape, unadorned sail fully unfurled as it cut through the waves towards where she was docked.

Coddi wasn't worried, not just because of her faith in the strength of her crew but because of a knowing deep in her keel and soul. A knowing only one person, one Captain, had ever inspired in her.

(A feeling of darkness and death and the call of the Locker.)

Curious noises came from the beach as her crew - still hers, even divided as they were - noticed the approaching ship as it came into cannon range and began to slow.

:Sister!:

The Metanoia called, sails rippling with joy.

:Have I got a story for you!: